Liu named Wyoming Excellence Chair in Climate Science at UW

May 1, 2013

An internationally recognized scientist in climate modeling,
aerosol-cloud reactions and aerosol modeling is the newest endowed chair at the
University of Wyoming.

Xiaohong Liu has been named Wyoming Excellence Chair in
Climate Science and professor in UW’s Department of Atmospheric Science. Liu
will begin his appointment at UW Aug. 1. He currently is senior research
scientist at the Atmospheric Science and Global Change Division of the
Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, located in
Richland, Wash.

The 2006 Wyoming Legislature established the Excellence
in Higher Education Endowment, which included a $70 million endowment for the
creation of senior faculty positions for highly distinguished scholars and
educators at UW. The legislation states that the endowed positions must expand
university instruction and research in disciplines related to economic and
social challenges facing Wyoming.

The UW Wyoming Excellence chairs are nationally and
internationally recognized leaders in their fields.

“He was chosen for his exceptional research on modeling
of atmospheric aerosols, and their direct and indirect effects on global and
regional climate,” Al Rodi, head of the UW Department of Atmospheric Science,
says of Liu. “His work on cloud microphysics and cloud-aerosol interactions has
been implemented in several major climate models for the assessment and
projection of climate change.”

Because Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain region receive a
significant amount of their water resources from snowpack, the region is
vulnerable to climate change, Liu says. He adds he is interested in the impact
of human activities on snow packs, rainfall and snowfall; and climate extremes
due to greenhouse gases and forest fires.

“The Yellowstone high-performance computer at the
NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center provides the access to the tremendous
resources for simulating the complex cloud and precipitation processes, and for
exploring the climate change at both the regional and global scales,” Liu says.
“As a modeler, the University of Wyoming, with its strengths in atmospheric
measurements, offers me the opportunity of close collaboration with observers
to effectively improve the climate models.”

Liu edits the journal “Atmospheric
Chemistry and Physics” and has served as a guest professor at Nanjing
University in China and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese
Academy of Science in Beijing, China, where he advises doctoral students.

He has received numerous awards and honors, including
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Exceptional Contribution Program Award
and Outstanding Performance Award; the World Meteorological Society’s Young
Scientist Award and its Mariolopoulos-Kanaginis Award (honorable mention) for
papers in atmospheric environmental research; the Alexander von Humboldt
Research Fellow at Fraunhofer Institute for Atmospheric Environmental Research, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany;
and was elected into the “100 Talent Program” of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences.

Liu has secured more than $33 million in grant funding for
research, according to his vita.

Liu is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the
American Meteorological Society and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.

He received his doctorate and master’s degree in atmospheric
science, and his bachelor’s degree in atmospheric physics, all from Nanjing
University, Nanjing, China.

“The addition of Dr. Liu to the UW faculty, as one of the
Wyoming Excellence chair holders, represents an even stronger commitment by the
Department of Atmospheric Science to the university’s partnership with the
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR),” says Myron Allen, UW provost
and vice president for academic affairs. “It also represents a bright future
for the College of Engineering and Applied Science in computational science
and engineering -- one of the areas of teaching and research emphasized in UW’s
strategic plan.”

Photo:Xiaohong Liu has been named Wyoming Excellence Chair in
Climate Science and professor in the UW Department of Atmospheric Science. (M.
Wang Photo)